Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies (Applause Books) (41 page)

BACK TO NEW YORK AND BROADWAY PREVIEWS,
MARCH 21–APRIL 3

 

 

 

 

S
unday was travel day. The load-out at the theater continued into the small hours of the morning, and by midday Sunday not a trace of
Follies
remained at the Colonial; the entire physical production was in trucks somewhere between Boston and New York. The challenge was to reassemble the show in New York efficiently, and for the most part the last items loaded out were the first items loaded in. Time was tight, with the first preview scheduled for Thursday. And in New York, unlike Boston, there was no Allen’s Alley where trucks could be parked; the Winter Garden extended from Broadway to Seventh Avenue, with the loading dock on Seventh Avenue. The
Follies
trucks could line up in the block between Fiftieth and Fifty-first Streets, but it was a busy Manhattan thoroughfare, even on a Sunday. Somehow, though, it all went as planned: hanging pieces in first, including drops and lighting rigs; then the raked deck, including all the winches and cables to move the units; then the angled floors; and finally the seven steel units on the sides and the downstage towers. Trunks with costumes were brought upstairs to the wardrobe room, which looked out onto Fiftieth Street. Prop trunks went to the basement, as did all the music. There were two small set pieces that hadn’t been used in Boston; they were delivered from Feller’s and were laid out gingerly over seats in the auditorium. Although Broadway stagehands tend to be thought of as guys who spend a lot of time hanging around, watch them during a load-in. There is no better indication of just how skillful they are than to see them deal with the logistics of loading a big show into what amounts to a surprisingly small space.

The actors traveled back to New York in much the same way they had gone to Boston, most of them on buses, though the principal actors and creative staff flew. Some drove, and I volunteered to rent a car to drive Yvonne. Along the way, I showed her some New England sights, including the O’Neill Center in Waterford, Connecticut. Not quite a B movie, not quite a Robert Anderson play, the two of us walking on the Connecticut beach on a cold March day, she wrapped in her white fur, me in a plain winter jacket, would have made a curious sight for any of the people I knew at the O’Neill. We ran into no one.

When we got to New York, I couldn’t wait to go down and see the theater, so before returning the rental car, I drove down to have a look. The main entrance of the Winter Garden is on Broadway, but there is a second marquee on the Seventh Avenue side. The enormous billboard, about which there had been so much discussion, was on the Broadway side, and still empty, although there was evidence of work being done to prepare it for painting. But the marquee was lit up, and it said
Follies.
The entire poster was reproduced on the left side, against a white background, but on the right was the lettering of the title only, separated from the artwork and with its vanishing point visible, so it looked as if it was zooming out at you. Underneath it said “A New Musical.” I assumed the idea was to punch up the title itself, but it was slightly jarring seeing the title all by itself. Otherwise, things were quiet; all the commotion was on Seventh Avenue, where the trucks were spilling out their contents, briefly onto the sidewalk and then in through the theater’s large loading doors. It was as noisy as the Boston load-out had been the night before.

The company wasn’t wanted at the theater until Tuesday—till then they’d be back at the American Theater Lab—but I decided to stop in on Monday to get a look inside. At ten A.M. only the farthest upstage hanging pieces were in view; the rest of the drops and hanging scenery had already been raised up and out of the way. The deck was in pieces all over the stage, slowly being assembled like a puzzle. Some of the set looked beaten up by the move, but I was reassured that touch-up work would make it all look like new. The theater, which had been dark since the abrupt closing of
Georgy,
a musical version of the popular film
Georgy Girl,
in the spring of 1970, was being cleaned and spruced up. Originally built in 1885 by William K. Vanderbilt as the American Horse Exchange, the Winter Garden had been renovated many times over the years, at first turning a building meant for the display and sale of animals into a bona fide theater. It was wider and lower than most Broadway theaters. The Shubert brothers leased it for revues in 1911, creating a garden motif for the interior design. The great theater architect Herbert Krapp spearheaded a major renovation in 1923, “in the more traditional Adamesque style,” and nothing, other than routine maintenance, had been done to the theater since then. Some alterations to the orchestra pit had been made for
Follies,
however, and the show was asked to share the costs with the landlords. Chandeliers were lowered for cleaning, painters were doing touch-ups on walls and molding, seats were being vacuumed and railings polished. One cleaning woman said she hoped the show would run a long time since, frankly, she needed the work. She was worried, though; she said she’d read somewhere that the first act didn’t work.

Boris had designed the show specifically for the Winter Garden, and had taken its width into consideration from the beginning. The two set elements that hadn’t made their way to Boston were crumbling proscenium columns, strewn with rubble at the base. The proscenium arch of the Winter Garden is one sweeping frame without caps on top of the verticals. Boris’s set pieces created false caps, which defined the opening in a more traditional way. These units were attached to the theater’s actual proscenium; they helped blur the reality of the set, so you weren’t sure where the still-intact Winter Garden left off and the crumbling Weismann Theater began. They also provided a preview of the set for the audience, since they remained visible when the house curtain was lowered.

Fritz Holt was once again in charge. Boris and Lisa were in the auditorium watching, noting things that needed to be attended to and available to answer technical questions as they arose. Tharon Musser and Spencer Mosse were there as well, doing what they could with the lights until they were given their time to focus. Jack Mann was rummaging around, setting up his sound equipment.

The rehearsals, back downtown, were mostly about maintenance and filling time while waiting to get into the theater. Obviously, everyone was excited about being back in town, and everyone had felt a boost from the success of the new Prologue. Michael still had a few details to clean up, but now that the company had become used to the actuality of the set, the possibility of getting anything done on the flat floor of the rehearsal room where it had all begun was remote. Hal ran a few of the notorious trouble spots, but the day was decidedly taken at ease. Mary Bryant had designs on the leading ladies, as several publications, including the
New York Times,
wanted to do triple profiles of Alexis, Dorothy, and Yvonne.

By Tuesday morning the set was basically back together. Crew members were everywhere, welding pieces of metal, focusing lights, pushing and prodding planks. The piano was up on its platform for the onstage band. I climbed up to the theater’s small balcony, which only had seven rows, and took a look at the set. The two proscenium pieces had been installed, and the downstage towers, which had been obscured by the proscenium in Boston, were now visible. For the first time, the design made complete sense. Boris had taken every aspect of this theater—the good parts and the bad—into consideration. He had designed the set in Cinemascope. The skeletal nature of the side units and the towers offset the gray floors of the central stage platforms. The light bridges were more visible, both on top and on the sides, which simply added to the overall sense of theatricality.

The company was called to the theater in the early afternoon. The plan was first to get acquainted with the new surroundings and then to get back onstage. Fritz and George and John had been preparing for everyone’s arrival, having made the dressing-room assignments. Unlike at the Colonial, there were no dressing rooms on stage level; they were all up at least one set of stairs. That was the lay of the land, and there was nothing to be done about it; but the rooms assigned to Alexis, Dorothy, and Yvonne had been decorated to suit their individual tastes, a clever way of welcoming stars to what are, in truth, tiny, dark, and rather unappealing rooms. There were fewer flights of stairs than at the Colonial but also fewer dressing rooms. There was still a stage managers’ office on one of the higher floors where the sturdy red IBM typewriter was properly installed.

Another problem was traffic. Dressing rooms at the Colonial were all off stage left; at the Winter Garden they were all off stage right. That meant that every entrance had to be rethought, since the amount of time needed to get from dressing room to stage would be different. This had, of course, all been discussed, but there were divas in our midst. And the reality is that despite Broadway’s aura of glamour, there is nothing remotely glamorous about the backstage of a Broadway theater. The stages are small, and the support facilities are squeezed into any available space, usually upstairs or down in the basement. But today the company had bigger things on its mind, so no one was about to make trouble over space or dressing-room assignments. What they were really concerned with was facing that first New York audience in two days.

After finding their dressing rooms and being shown where the pass doors were to get out into the house, the company assembled in the first few rows. Steve and Jim were sitting farther back, talking with each other and with Boris and a few others who were straggling in. Hal leaned up against the orchestra rail and gave a brief welcoming speech. “Well, we’re here,” he began. He was anxious to do a run-through, obviously without costumes and lighting and orchestra, but he also knew better than to rush the technical preparations. Looking around, he smiled and said, “Clearly, they need every available moment.” Michael ran a couple of things—first “Loveland,” changing a few of the steps, and then “Love Will See Us Through,” stopping to work with Harvey Evans and Marti Rolph. Steve had cut a part of the verse late in Boston, but otherwise the song hadn’t been touched in weeks. It was strange for that song to be rehearsed at this point; it seemed as if something was up, but no one could tell exactly what. Michael was focused more on the performances than on the staging itself. Then he ran through the new Prologue, just to make certain Saturday night in Boston hadn’t been a fluke.

At 3:45, after both Hal and Michael had finished with their small rehearsals, Hal called for a run-through. He wanted everyone to get the feel of the theater, which was very different from the Colonial. Unlike during the tech period in Boston, there was now a general sense of confidence. Ethel, as always, was a pro, and paced her new route from the dressing room to the stage. She was loving it—ecstatic to be back in the Winter Garden, where she had made her Broadway debut in
The Passing Show of 1922.
And Fifi seemed resigned to her place in the show. She had figured out that
Follies
wasn’t about Solange LaFitte. She wasn’t going to make a fuss about her song; she wasn’t going to make a fuss about anyone else’s role; and she had also got the message loud and clear that Ethel wasn’t interested in being her buddy. But she hadn’t been totally overlooked: toward the end of the Boston run, she was profiled in the
Boston Record American,
where she finally found a willing audience for her stories about her “famous feud with Earl Carroll” and her “tantrum that wrecked a Cleveland dressing room” and her “bath in the public fountain in the center of Indianapolis.” For the press she was full of spirit: “Now I’ve finally made it. I don’t want to go back to my youth. I was always worn out then. Youth can really do a woman in! Oh, la la!”

The run-through was exciting, and there was something special about finally seeing
Follies
on the stage for which it was intended. The company felt good about it, and as soon as it was over, the stage was turned back to Fritz and the crews. Rehearsals now were moved to the Broadway Arts Studios, uptown on Broadway, above a car dealership.

Michael went on polishing numbers, some of which needed no polish, but he was a perfectionist and wanted to fine-tune every moment. “Buddy’s Blues” was this afternoon’s victim, with Buddy and his two Follies girls, who finally accepted the number and performed it well. “There’s a step that will get you a hand when you three cross the stage together—let’s find it,” Michael said. Gene suggested a certain dance figure, which Michael graciously accepted. “Okay, then, let’s see what happens if you strut, corny as that may sound.” It worked, and the number was better. He also mentioned a little technical addition to the number that was scheduled to be tried as soon as the stage was available. Then he took the women through the mirror number, and gave supportive notes: “Start off looking absolutely glamorous. But remember that you are chorus girls who are having fun.”